Photo: Maynards
Construction of the Holden plant in Elizabeth, South Australia, began in May 1958. The company’s only production facility for the time being, the year was 1963 when the first car rolled off the assembly line at Elizabeth. Production, however, will stop on October 20, 2017, after lots of planning from both Holden and the government. What’ll happen to the factory, though?
Following the sale of the Port Melbourne V6 engine plant in 2016, Holden now plans to dismantle the Commodore line. Industrial liquidation specialist Maynards is tasked with the sale of every bit and bob of value at the Adelaide Vehicle Manufacturing & Assembly facility. According to the listing, binding offers are open until October 31, 2017, including private negotiation for the assembly line’s tools and robots.
Piece by piece, highlights include 60 stamping, blanking and die presses, 18 injection molding presses, 450 robots, a tire-to-rim assembly line, and 20 overhead gantry cranes. Holden is also interested in selling 50-ton raw material storage silos, a laser perforation cell, and countless other auxiliary machines.
Currently producing approximately 335 vehicles per day, the days of the Commodore, Caprice, Caprice PPV, and Chevrolet SS are numbered. Once decommissioned, the Australian arm of General Motors will rely on the mothership for each car sold in the Land Down Under and New Zealand.
Take the Commodore’s replacement as a case in point. An Opel in Europe and a Buick in the United States, the all-new Insignia in both sedan and longroof forms acts as the heir-apparent of the full-sized icon. Before booing and hissing Holden for rebadging the Insignia as the Commodore, it’s worth remembering that Ford’s replacement for the Falcon is also a mid-sized sedan riding on a front-wheel-drive platform.
The plant’s closure will also mark the death of the GM Zeta architecture, leaving the Alpha (Chevrolet Camaro) and the Omega (Cadillac CT6) platforms to their own devices.
Piece by piece, highlights include 60 stamping, blanking and die presses, 18 injection molding presses, 450 robots, a tire-to-rim assembly line, and 20 overhead gantry cranes. Holden is also interested in selling 50-ton raw material storage silos, a laser perforation cell, and countless other auxiliary machines.
Currently producing approximately 335 vehicles per day, the days of the Commodore, Caprice, Caprice PPV, and Chevrolet SS are numbered. Once decommissioned, the Australian arm of General Motors will rely on the mothership for each car sold in the Land Down Under and New Zealand.
Take the Commodore’s replacement as a case in point. An Opel in Europe and a Buick in the United States, the all-new Insignia in both sedan and longroof forms acts as the heir-apparent of the full-sized icon. Before booing and hissing Holden for rebadging the Insignia as the Commodore, it’s worth remembering that Ford’s replacement for the Falcon is also a mid-sized sedan riding on a front-wheel-drive platform.
The plant’s closure will also mark the death of the GM Zeta architecture, leaving the Alpha (Chevrolet Camaro) and the Omega (Cadillac CT6) platforms to their own devices.
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